Arlon's CSUMB ProSeminar CST300 Module 8 Learning Journal for the week Wed 02/24-Saturday 02/27, year 2021

Journal 8

Part 1:

Review Other Teams' final video projects As if you are their presentation coach, review the videos produced by three teams - including the two listed below yours in the share google doc "CST 300 Final Presentation Topic" and one of your choice. You are encouraged to review more. If your project is listed at the end, select the team at the top, so every team is reviewed by at least two others. Insert the link of the video and your evaluation and suggestion to your learning journal. Optional: You can also insert your evaluation and suggestions directly to their youtube video page as comments. Be constructive! The evaluation should include, but is not limited to 1. is the topic well covered? 2. is the presentation clear? 3. how is the quality of the research? 4. how is the quality of the video production? 5. is the video engaging and interesting? 6. is the team work evident? 7. is the video appropriate to the audience (either general public or technology professionals)

Team 1 - Osprey Corp. Business Technology Solutions - Marilyn Kathka, Haylee Bell, David Baker, Franco Belman - Public Video:

Overall reaction: super awesome, great job people! 1. is the topic well covered? Yes, mostly, I think except, that I'm still wondering a couple things about it. This was for the general public so that's probably fine. Also it seems like bitcoin is one specific use of blockchain rather than the only thing blockchain does. 2. is the presentation clear? Yes, the presentation is clear. You could hear everyone's words, nobody mumbled, and they made clear statements. 3. how is the quality of the research? The quality of research is good, they told me things I did not know and seemed knowledgeable on their topic. 4. how is the quality of the video production? The quality of the video production is good, they used cool graphics, spoke clearly and talked about something interesting. 5. is the video engaging and interesting? The video is engaging, first they talked about something mysterious, they told us what blockchain will be used for and generally speaking, vaguely how it works. 6. is the team work evident? Team work is obvious because they referred to each other in the video, and unless one person in the team wants to and can do all the research, scripting, animation and video editing, you'd need team members to help you do all that stuff. Also several people spoke in the video. 7. is the video appropriate to the audience The video is appropriate for the audience because it was non-technical and yet still informative. I doubt if my mom would have any questions at the end.

Team 1 - Osprey Corp. Business Technology Solutions - Marilyn Kathka, Haylee Bell, David Baker, Franco Belman - Professional Video:

1. is the topic well covered? The topic is well covered except that I am still wondering a few things, including a little more about the algorithm behind the process. There is some computation that locks in transactions. I know it's super hard to explain how it works, they don't have much time and most people don't want to know too much, but I'm a little curious about the exact algorithm in play and exactly how it works. They definitely touch over it pretty well for how much time they have. Also I'm still not sure what is the distinction between blockchain and bitcoin. Overall I think they did a spectacular job explaining such an opaque topic, hats off to the team! 2. is the presentation clear? The presentation is very clear, I could hear everyones words, I could understand all the statements they made and they did a great job explaining several facets of what is known as blockchain. 3. how is the quality of the research? The quality of research is thorough and they told me lots of stuff I did not know. I was almost convinced they figured out who the real Satoshi Nakamoto is. It seems like someone figured it out. Just because he died, supposedly, doesn't prove anything. If I were the inventor of bitcoin I'd be fake dead too! Dude's hanging out on a secret island somewhere with 'Pac, Biggie, Jobs, Cobain, and maybe Elvis. 4. how is the quality of the video production? The quality of the video production is great, I have no idea how people know how to do all this video editing so well. 5. is the video engaging and interesting? The video is engaging and interesting, starting with the mystery of Satoshi Nakamoto covering several aspects of blockchain, explaining basically for the most part, generally what's going on and how it works. 6. is the team work evident? Team work is evident, they have a ton of information, presentation materials, several narrators, unless you were inspector gadget there would be no way to add that many facets to the production without other people's help. 7. is the video appropriate to the audience Yes, the video appropriate to the audience, they explain how it works, why it's good, I don't think they had time to explain exactly how it works but they did a great job explaining as much as I think was appropriate.

Team 2 - AlphaGameZ - Fadl Ghaddar, Aisha Lalli, Abraham Borg, Benjamin Mona - Public Video:

General Reaction: Spectacular job, very informative, very well done! 1. is the topic well covered? Yes, I learned a lot just from the simplified version. I did not even know there was that information available on the topic. 2. is the presentation clear? Yes, They spoke clearly, they made clear statements and it was clear what they were talking about. 3. how is the quality of the research? The quality of research was good, several facets of the topic of delivery drones were covered including their purpose, potential problems, who are using them, predictions for what they may help with, problems they might solve etc. To be able to include that much information, they would have had to have had good quality research. 4. how is the quality of the video production? The video production quality is good, it seemed like a real youtube, there were no blips, lots of visual additions and professional overall assembly of voice-over with graphics. 5. is the video engaging and interesting? The video is engaging and interesting; I see explosions, people are narrating with good energy, good tone, exciting and colorful visual imagery for graphic additions and the topic overall is exciting. The only thing more exciting would be drone cars. 6. is the team work evident? Team work is evident in that there was so much information and quality video editing evident, unless you somehow knew how to do all that on your own you would have had to have help with that much quality simplified information. 7. is the video appropriate to the audience The is video appropriate to the audience; I learned a lot but they did not say anything confusing or too technical for any general audience.

Team 2 - AlphaGameZ - Fadl Ghaddar, Aisha Lalli, Abraham Borg, Benjamin Mona - Professional Video:

1. is the topic well covered? Yes, many facets of what, why, and all about delivery drones, what they do, some of their implications, and this video has more technical specs than the one they made for the general public. 2. is the presentation clear? The presentation is very clear, they spoke clearly, made clear statements, posed clear issues and clear points, had clear graphics and the presentation was clear overall. 3. how is the quality of the research? The quality of research is good; lots of technical information is provided. They spoke about several facets of the topic of delivery drones, they would have had to have gotten good quality research in order to be able to provide this much information in their technical video. 4. how is the quality of the video production? The quality of the video production is perfectly professional. How everyone knows how to do all this is beyond me. Great job creating such a professional quality video everyone! 5. is the video engaging and interesting? The video is engaging, they spoke with good energy, had interesting information, had lots of facets of the topic to discuss and progressed through the video with excitement and upbeat tone. I hear interesting discussion on sub-topics, the word explosion which is always good and they used quality helpful visual additions. 6. is the team work evident? To have that much visual and audio in one video you would need either team work or some secret research and video tool nobody has, I hear several narrators and lots of skill sets evidently went into this video. It is smooth, informative, detailed and professional. They must have had a high level of cooperation within the team. Great job, team! 7. is the video appropriate to the audience The video is appropriate to the audience; it was technical, they had legal implications, they had stats, they had financial data, they had technical diagrams and more technical sounding verbiage than their simplified video.

Team 3 - RunTime Consulting - Rahul Khurana, Mehar Rekhi, Lupita Sanchez, Sarom Thin - Public Video:

Overall Reaction: Amazing job, well done everyone!

1. is the topic well covered? Yes, for the most part! They explained in a novel way what cloud computing is - even in a way that related it to real actual clouds! The talked about what it's used for, and even generally touched on basically how it works. 2. is the presentation clear? The presentation is clear and even humorous, they spoke clearly, had clear visual aids and made clear understandable statements, and the overall clarity was good. It's a great topic and I know lots of people have lots of questions about it. This would actually be a good video to show those people! I've had people ask me "what is the cloud?" I wish I could have pointed them to this video it would have helped. 3. how is the quality of the research? The quality of research is good; anyone in the general public that didn't know what the cloud was would learn a lot. They even give an analogy with real clouds, which I've never heard or thought of before. They mention enough information that they would have had to have had quality research to help them come up with all of it. 4. how is the quality of the video production? The quality of the video is professional; transitions are smooth, the sound is perfect, nobody mis-speaks or says anything dumb, and they add in quality visual additions. 5. is the video engaging and interesting? The video is engaging and interesting; they narrate with an upbeat tone, discuss interesting aspects of cloud computing including benefits, and even come up with a humorous and useful analogy to real clouds, helping to explain how they work! 6. is the team work evident? They have tons of visual aids, a great explanation of cloud computing, clear presentation and quality video editing - you'd have to either be a super eclectic genius with 12 hands or have team work to get all this produced. I think they definitely had lots of successful team work collaboration in order to get this high quality of a video produced. Great job, team! 7. is the video appropriate to the audience The the video is appropriate to the audience; They explained cloud computing without having to say anything technical. I wish I had this video years ago when people asked me what cloud computing was. It would be perfect to show someone from a general audience. It explains cloud computing and yet doesn't say anything someone non-technical wouldn't understand.

Team 3 - RunTime Consulting - Rahul Khurana, Mehar Rekhi, Lupita Sanchez, Sarom Thin - Professional Video:

1. is the topic well covered? Yes, for the most part, except I didn't hear them mention that it's fast because it utilizes a distributed computing or a clustered computing operating system/paradigm that distributes computations between many computers, which is really what cloud computing is. Also they did not seem to discuss that there is extremely increased reliability because of adding redundant systems. 2. is the presentation clear? The presentation is clear, they speak clearly, have clear visual aids, make clear statements and generally everything they say is clearly presented. 3. how is the quality of the research? The quality of research is good, they cover history, what it does, benefits, the three basic types of cloud computing and lots of information and several facets on the topic of cloud computing, you would have had to have gotten good research in order to provide all that quality information. 4. how is the quality of the video production? The quality of the video production is good; they have smooth transitions, clear video and audio, no glitches, and it seems like an actual, technical, informative youtube video you'd actually see on youtube. 5. is the video engaging and interesting? The video is engaging and interesting; they covered various interesting aspects of cloud computing, what it is, types of it, advantages, used colorful graphics, spoke with good energy and progressed through the various facets of cloud computing rapidly enough. 6. is the team work evident? So many facets of a good video were produced such as quality information, quality narration, quality visual aids and quality video editing, they would have had to have cooperated to a high degree to produce this high quality of an informative technical video. 7. is the video appropriate to the audience Yes, the video is appropriate to the audience; technical topics were covered such as more in-depth discussion than their non-technical video. I think the only thing they forgot to talk about was that cloud computing utilizes distributed computing paradigm for optimizing computational speed, and also that distributed data increases redundancy and hence reliability. Redundant processing power also increases reliability of the overall system.

Part 2:

Add in your video project and write one last entry about what you have learned in the class. How has your team communicated and/or collaborated? What can you do to make that collaboration more effective next time?

Team Videos:

Edge Computing Simplified | Team CIA:
Edge Computing Simplified | Team CIA: https://youtu.be/Vpz6URp5YNo

Edge Computing In-Depth | Team CIA:
Edge Computing In-Depth | Team CIA: https://youtu.be/wSzjxWPfsRc

This class was essential, I really appreciated it. I think the most important thing about it was making sure we knew how to make research references in papers. We all learned this I think in 4th grade, which was for me, I think about 36 years ago. Way too long to still be proficient. I still have one or two questions I will ask about it - italics I feel like there were mixed messages about which thing to italicise, that is probably my fault and I will get it clarified I think soon. Scribbr seems to make it pretty clear and I thought I had pretty clear messages about it until then all of a sudden one or two messages seem contrary. So I will get it clarified.

I also appreciated revisiting logical fallacies because they are so common, with myself included, and being more aware of exactly what we are saying helps us make more sense to the world and make more sense of everything around us for ourselves. As we get older we get used to these ways of talking so its really great to remind us to be more specific, especially since hopefully we're all about to become super specific computer programmers.

Although I haven't given it a shot yet, I really appreciate knowing about Weebly, and I've seen other student's Weebly sites and I think they are great! So I will be sure to add that to my toolbox. Even if not just to tell other people how they could make websites for themselves, it will be a great tool to know about.

I'm not a humungous fan of group work, but then again I doubt if any student is. I see why it is important, if you can't work in a group you're going to have to work alone, and that's prohibitively restrictive for it's own reasons. Plus nobody has to teach you to work on your own, presumably we already know how to do that. It's definitely another tool for the box. It's kind of like a sledge hammer. You don't always need it, but when you do it will really help get the job done. It can also be a little clumsy. I had to look up how to spell clumsy.

The way our team communicated and/or collaborated wasn't half bad. It's always a little scary going into it wondering how is this going to work. For me the video work was really intimidating because I know video editing is a huge skill in and of itself which I don't pretend to have. Same with Power Point really. So the way we communicated and/or collaborated was pretty down to earth. Everyone wanted to do stuff so that made it a lot easier. Nobody put up any resistance. We didn't have a whole ton of actual group assignments until the video came along, just to keep an agenda and minutes and keep meeting regularly, review each other's stuff, stuff like that. Well there was the resume right off the bat which went pretty smooth just because it was just us adding in our own stuff to one document. Summary of classes was another one we got through okay overall. Then the video project came along and it was a substantially larger project than previous assignments, so it was a lot more intimidating, especially for my lack of knowledge in the direction of video production. Siju came up with a draft script for it right away which really helped a lot. So I volunteered to narrate and it turned out Cristian and Gloriana knew how to make Power Points and do video editing! Who knew! I helped polish the script a bit and really practiced the narration through several levels of improvement. I had to work through not stuttering, overall clarity, enunciation, trying to go through the entire video without making any mistakes for both videos, sound professional, knowledgable, exciting, simultaneously relaxed, and hopefully - just like James Earl Jones and/or Morgan Freeman. Ha, ha. It took a lot of practice, however far I got, and just when I thought I had it, I would listen to what I'd recorded and it would sound stressed because I was trying to sound exciting too. So anyway, after many many iterations of practice, recording and re-recording, you have the final narration. That was good on several levels too because also when I thought I was done I would still find problems or just areas of improvement that could be made in the script, after reading it what seemed like hundreds of times - wait a minute - did I just say that? So finally I got the narration done and Gloriana and Cristian were able to somehow superimpose the sound narration I made over the power point they made, for the final, hopefully award winning videos!

To make collaboration more effective next time I think I could figure out what the open source alternative to power point is and start seeing what it can do. There are lots of open source video editing tools too, I started to become aware of. Gloriana asked me to re-do the video so it would be slower - more like James Earl Jones - so I started by literally slowing down my latest take with an open source tool I found for command line video editing, but wound up just remaking it with my voice so it would be organic. It's good to know all the tools that are available though. I used mencoder and ffmpeg to test out some tricks I found but didn't actually use the output. Cristian mentioned that Audacity is good for sound editing, and I know I have a copy of that installed so I'll give that a run and see what it's all about. I'm not sure where all the cool clip art came from either, which would be a really good trick to know. I'm guessing it's part of Power Point? I'm not sure yet, but I'll find out hopefully.

Edge Computing Simplified | Team CIA: Edge Computing Simplified | Team CIA: https://youtu.be/Vpz6URp5YNo

Edge Computing In-Depth | Team CIA: Edge Computing In-Depth | Team CIA: https://youtu.be/wSzjxWPfsRc

Arlon's Website: Arlon's Website https://arlonarriola.com/